The Infinite Vacation #1 - Mobile Edition

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The Infinite Vacation #1
By Zak Edwards
January 15, 2011 - 14:57

Image Comics
Writer(s): Nick Spencer
Penciller(s): Christian Ward
Letterer(s): Jeff Powell
$3.50 US

It’s no secret Nick Spencer is on a roll, a fresh face in the comic book scene who is gaining no small amount of notoriety with those select individuals who realize there are comic books published outside of Marvel and DC. Morning Glories was the runaway success of 2010, hands down, and his multiple other projects, like Shuddertown and his Existence books, are garnering critical praise and attention. Spencer is the one to follow if you like telling people they’re bandwagon hoppers a few years from now and, inevitably, if you want to read some great comics before they will be impossible to track down in the future. The Infinite vacation is another book which is sure to turn heads, taking a crazy concept, running with it, and then coupling it with some great artistic style and flavour, courtesy of Christian Ward.

The Infinite Vacation imagines a world where everyone has an iPhone equivalent and an app which literally changes your life; not in a "this yoga DVD set will change your life in four easy payments" way, but actually change it. Basically, a company has set up an interdimensional ebay where other versions of yourself can auction their lives for fun and profit, with most people apparently doing this multiple times every single day. While the concept is out there, borrowing a little from other pieces of media which offer similar multidimensional concepts, but is original and exciting because Spencer has thought the idea through. One of the aspects of Y: The Last Man which made it so interesting was the obvious research Brian K. Vaughan did to shape his world, considering gender demographics and then extrapolating into a fully realized world. Australia taking over the seas because they were the only ones with a significant number of female navy staff just makes sense, but requires a bit of research and thought. While Spencer’s book relies less on concrete facts, his extrapolations make sense and feel fully realized. There is some stereotypical resistance from mostly religious types, but there is also a general apathy running through society as a whole simply because they can pay for change over actually doing something. While a concept like this can become lost without that fresh face archetypal character (think Ellen Page in Inception or Peggy Olsen in Mad Men), Spencer dedicates a substantial amount of this initial issue to making sure the concept is understood, including a tutorial/advertisement in the middle which is quite visually amazing.

And this tutorial/advertisement sequence is what made me fall in love instantly. While Spencer’s concept and execution are amazing, this series comes together thanks to Christian Ward. His art and execution are visually brilliant, combining photography with painting and seemingly everything in between, really cool without becoming incoherent. Many readers are already used to the incorporation of multiple mediums into comics, as demonstrated by the success of creators like Alex Ross, but Ward’s is still a bit of a jolt in terms of style, but in a good way. The entire sequence of the tutorial with the pictures is stunning and his other, more normal sequences are just as well done. But for all his very stylistic paneling and experimentation within each picture, Ward’s art feels like a series of snapshots over a flowing narrative, possibly my sole complaint against the comic. Every picture is a stand alone art piece rather than a sequence, kind of taking the “sequential” out of sequential art. Nevertheless, this book looks amazing and you are wasting precious moments reading this rather than running to the comic store and buying this yourself.

Grade: A+ Fully realized and perfectly executed.